💡 Think:
Words create worlds.
Generative AI, powered by large language models, has made significant strides by analyzing vast amounts of data to uncover patterns in language. This enables machines to mimic human speech and create images that resemble human designs. These models are trained to understand the relationships between words, allowing them to generate coherent and contextually appropriate responses or creative outputs.
In chasidic thought, the relationship between speech and creation is of critical importance:
The phrases of Creation, “Let there be light… Let there be a firmament…” aren’t just steps in the creative process, but the very continuity of reality itself.
The Alter Rebbe, the founder of the Chabad movement, writes in Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah, the second section of his magnum opus the Tanya1, that:
”'It is written: “Forever, O G‑d, Your word stands firm in the heavens.’
…these very words and letters through which the heavens were created stand firmly forever within the firmament of heaven and are forever clothed within all the heavens to give them life.
For if the creative letters were to depart even for an instant,
For if the creative letters were to depart even for an instant, G‑d forbid, and return to their source, that source being the degree of G‑dliness from whence they emanate,
all the heavens would become naught and absolute nothingness, and it would be as though they had never existed at all,exactly as before the utterance, ‘Let there be a firmament.’”
That creative power of speech has traditionally been reflected in our identity as humans.
In Jewish philosophical tradition, a human is called a medaber, a speaker, and not a maskil, a thinker. True human sentio This is because human speech is different than mere expression through sounds. For it is not merely an external “revelation”; rather, it reveals what is "hidden" inside the person. Certainly, one can parrot words and sounds, but medaber refers to the power that gives shape, letters and words to one’s thoughts, which are then spoken.2
(Therein lies the difference between human speech, and generative AI. If true speech was merely the ability to produce sounds, than even non-humans could speak. The parrot, be it a physical one or a stochastic one, can be taught to mimic the sounds, but is not a medaber, since true speech is to reveal the ideas found within the soul.3)
There are moments, however, that transcend speech. This past year feels like one that has often given expression to those ties.
The Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Chassidic movement, taught that the undulating wail of the shofar’s blasts replicate the primal scream of the soul. In place of the complexity of ideas that are expressed through words, the shofar represents the unvarnished call of the soul to shake off the negativity of the past year and reach new heights. It is the cry for our past and our desire to connect even deeper in the future.
The cry, unlike the spoken world, connects to our Creator on a level that transcends ideas and logic. It renews G-d’s relationship with a world created by Divine speech by reaching a level beyond speech. We reach out from our essence and attach ourselves to the essence of the Creator…
As we move ever further into a future where the intellectual and creative nature of our Humanity becomes ever harder to differentiate from the Machine, it is the revealed essence of our soul that will continue to shine forth as the beacon of human light at the heart of reality.
May our calls to heaven truly pierce the darkness and, this year, bring the Divine love and embrace we need.
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Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn of Lubavitch, Torat Shalom p. 245
Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn of Lubavitch, Discourse from 5672 p. 905